George Gurdjieff Biography Quotes 5 Report mistakes

Early Life and Background
George Ivanovich Gurdjieff emerged from the multicultural world of the Caucasus in the late 19th century. Accounts place his birth in Alexandropol (now Gyumri) in the Russian Empire, in a region today within Armenia, and many sources date it to the 1860s or 1870s. Of mixed Greek and Armenian heritage, he grew up among intersecting traditions of Christianity and Islam, folk epics, and village craft. His father, often described as a carpenter and an ashugh, or bard, recited long epics and moral tales; his mother was Armenian. This borderland setting, shaped by trade routes, shifting empires, and varied faiths, formed a backdrop for the questions that would preoccupy him: what it means to be human, why people live as if asleep, and whether real development of consciousness is possible.

Search for Knowledge
As a young man he sought sources of ancient wisdom and methods of self-transformation. In later writings he recounted travels through Asia Minor, the Middle East, and Central Asia, meeting dervishes, monks, and scholars, and hearing of hidden brotherhoods. Whether particular episodes occurred exactly as narrated, the motif of a long, comparative search is central to his self-understanding. He presented himself as an experimenter who tested methods in rigorous conditions and who came to believe that fragments of a practical esoteric science survived in scattered traditions. The experiences of the search, set out as portraits of remarkable teachers and circumstances, provided a narrative frame for the system he later taught.

Russia and the Caucasus
By the 1910s he appeared in Moscow and St. Petersburg, gathering a circle of pupils and outlining a practical teaching. Among the earliest to respond was P. D. Ouspensky, a mathematician-journalist who would later describe their years together in his book In Search of the Miraculous. The upheavals of war and revolution forced Gurdjieff and his students south to the Caucasus; groups formed in Essentuki and Tiflis (Tbilisi). There he elaborated exercises, movements, and ideas for examining attention and habit. He emphasized that ordinary life proceeds in mechanical patterns and that sustained efforts in the midst of life can awaken a different quality of presence.

Developing the Fourth Way
He called his path the Fourth Way to distinguish it from traditional monastic, fakir, or yogic paths. Where those require withdrawal or extreme specialization, his approach uses ordinary circumstances and friction with others as material for work. He spoke of self-remembering, the division of attention, conscious labor and intentional suffering, and the harmonization of intellectual, emotional, and moving-instinctive functions. Two laws, of three and of seven, and the symbol of the enneagram served as schematic tools for understanding processes. He insisted that ideas alone are insufficient; without practical struggle and impartial self-observation, everything remains theory.

Institute at the Prieure and Demonstrations
After a period in Constantinople, he moved to Western Europe and in 1922 founded the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man at the Prieure near Fontainebleau-Avon, outside Paris. Work there combined physical tasks, music, and the Movements, a demanding repertory of sacred dances and coordinated postures. Public demonstrations in Paris and London drew attention. The writer Katherine Mansfield spent her last weeks at the Prieure and died there, a circumstance that stirred controversy while also revealing the community's unusual atmosphere of intensity and care. In 1924 Gurdjieff toured the United States with a troupe presenting his Movements; soon after his return to France he survived a serious car crash and redirected his efforts for a time toward writing.

Key Collaborators and Students
His circles included artists, physicians, and editors who helped spread and translate the work. The composer Thomas de Hartmann, with the unwavering assistance of his wife Olga de Hartmann, collaborated closely with Gurdjieff to notate and arrange a large body of piano and ensemble music associated with exercises and Movements. Jeanne de Salzmann, trained as a dancer, and her husband Alexandre de Salzmann became central collaborators; Jeanne de Salzmann's role grew steadily, especially in shaping the Movements and in safeguarding the continuity of the teaching in later decades. In Russia and later in London, Ouspensky taught independently, crystallizing many of Gurdjieff's ideas for English-speaking audiences. A. R. Orage, the influential editor of The New Age, led groups for Gurdjieff in New York; figures such as Jane Heap and Margaret Anderson also became important conduits for the work in American literary circles. The psychiatrist Maurice Nicoll and the industrialist J. G. Bennett, among others, engaged with the teaching in creative ways that later informed their own writings and schools.

Writings, Music, and Movements
Gurdjieff turned increasingly to writing as a means of transmitting his ideas in forms he considered less prone to dilution. He issued The Herald of Coming Good in the early 1930s and labored for years on the trilogy All and Everything: Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, Meetings with Remarkable Men, and Life Is Real Only Then, When I Am. He read drafts aloud to students, revising meticulously. The prose is intentionally difficult, intended to require effort. Parallel to the writings, the Movements evolved as a precise language of attention and gesture, often taught to live piano accompaniment by de Hartmann. He used group tasks, the famous Stop exercise, and structured encounters to make students see the automatic nature of their reactions and to taste moments of collectedness.

Paris Years, War, and Last Period
The Prieure declined during the 1930s, yet his work did not cease. In Paris he gathered students in modest rooms, holding exacting classes and, during the war years, convening characteristically abundant dinners that doubled as laboratories of relationship and consideration. He could be severe, humorous, or enigmatic, using the smallest incident to illuminate inner habits. He maintained ties across Europe and America through trusted pupils, including Jeanne de Salzmann, Orage before his death, Jane Heap, and others who carried instructions to their own groups. After the liberation of Paris, his circle expanded again, drawing both earlier pupils and newcomers sent by teachers such as Ouspensky.

Death and Legacy
Gurdjieff died in France in 1949. After his death, Jeanne de Salzmann guided the continuation of the work, helping to establish formal organizations and a network of groups that kept Movements, music, and study alive. Michel de Salzmann later played a leading role in this ongoing stewardship. Ouspensky's posthumously published account gave a vivid record of early years and brought many readers to Gurdjieff's system. De Hartmann's music, preserved in recordings and scores, remains integral to practice. Jane Heap, Margaret Anderson, Maurice Nicoll, Bennett, and others left written commentaries and memoirs that, while distinct in tone, testify to a demanding but transformative encounter.

Character and Influence
Gurdjieff's influence spans spiritual practice, psychology, music, and dance. He did not present himself as a philosopher in the academic sense, but as a practical psychologist of the inner life, a craftsman of attention, and a teacher who placed responsibility on the individual to verify everything. He valued the shock of seeing one's own mechanicalness as the beginning of conscience, and he believed that real change requires sustained efforts in ordinary life with others. His insistence on verification, on schools as necessary structures, and on the dignity of work done with full attention continues to shape communities around the world. Whether one approaches him through the stern humor of Beelzebub's Tales, the spare narrative of Meetings with Remarkable Men, the intricate patterns of the Movements, or the recollections of students like Ouspensky, de Hartmann, or de Salzmann, the impression is of a teacher who sought to awaken in people a taste for inner freedom and a measure for their own being.

Our collection contains 5 quotes who is written by George, under the main topics: Wisdom - Faith - Knowledge - Change - Habits.